Drawing in Sand

A visually enticing way to introduce mark making using different coloured sand. Super quick to set up but it’s a good idea to have a hoover handy for a quick tidy up and to ensure you don’t get too much sand stuck to the bottom of your feet.

Set Up

Remember that toddlers only have a very short attention span so the activity has to be visually very appealing. So when putting two colours together, think about what will look enticing for your child. Putting the chair at an angle gives your mini human a social cue on where to sit for the activity.

The sand is from HobbyCraft and the black tray is from Amazon.

My toddler needed very little adult prompting or modelling to start drawing in the sand. The only adult intervention I gave was to shake the tray to give him a fresh surface to draw on.

This activity was left out and my mini human often revisited it during the afternoon and often brought different toys to put in the sand and draw with. Although we now have expensive bees wax crayons covered in coloured sand (!!!) he had begun to experiment with his future pen grip.

Just make sure you have a hoover handy to clean the sand up when the activity has finished.